Over the years, the data began to look the same as well, and the differences in each new hominid species delivered less excitement at every world.
Public disinterest eventually infected the science team.
They had begun with fifty scientists, carefully chosen from thousands of applicants. Janus had enlisted Isis to help him select their team, and she had felt truly lucky—many of the candidates had much more experience than she did and more right to be on the expedition. But her motivation was stronger than theirs… and very different.
The team that started as fifty dwindled to twenty, then to ten, five, and finally two: Janus and Isis. She couldn’t blame them. The scientists had grown up on a crowded world, in a dense social environment. The abject isolation of deep space exploration, hibernating for years at a time and repeating the same experiments over and over wore on the scientists. And those who weren’t bored with the research longed to return to the Atlantean homeworld where a new intellectual renaissance was happening. The new era of a single united society was a lure none but Janus and Isis could resist. They found themselves alone, and they were both glad for it, albeit for different reasons.
“It feels like we’re the last two people in the universe,” Janus said. On the viewscreen behind him, world 1632 emerged, a marble of purple, red, and white. It grew as the ship approached it.
“Yes,” Isis replied. “It’s the perfect way to do our research.”
Janus had collected his samples alone on 1632, barely speaking to her during their three-week survey. Isis knew that she had hurt him, but lying was worse. She was saving the lying for when she absolutely had to, and she would very soon.
As they entered their stasis chambers, Janus finally broke the ice. “See you at the next world, Isis.”
She nodded as the tube closed, and the fog surrounded her.
The next world, 1701, was the one she had been waiting for. It was just in range.
Janus was his old self again when he emerged from the tube. For each of them, only a few seconds had passed, but two years had gone by outside. The time-dilation bells at each end of the ship, coupled with the stasis chambers, made leap-frogging through time and space as easy as taking a nap.
“Some exotic species have evolved since the initial survey,” Janus said. “Let’s take the Alpha Lander. Could be an arc opportunity.”
“I agree,” Isis said. She activated her own terminal and scrolled through, searching for an excuse to escape. “The advance probes also found signs of fossilized life on one of the moons of the seventh planet. I’d like to take the Delta Lander to retrieve some samples.”
Janus agreed reluctantly, and then said, “Let’s maintain periodic radio contact.”
“Of course.”
Isis had selected the Delta Lander for two reasons: it was the only lander capable of short-range hyperspace travel, and it had a resurrection raft.
At the edge of the solar system, she made the jump she had waited twenty-three years for: to the Exile colony.
The viewscreen inside the Delta Lander revealed a civilization taking its first tentative steps. The settlements were still too small to see from orbit, but under the viewscreen’s magnification, she saw farms on the outskirts of simple towns. The Exiles were slowly creating their own utopia, one very different from their homeworld.
Isis made radio contact, arranged the rendezvous, and landed on the surface. She ejected the resurrection raft just before she put down, then stood outside the lander and waited.
The location was a rocky terrain several miles outside a small settlement. After a few minutes, Lykos emerged from an outcropping. His boyish face was more chiseled and weathered, but his features still radiated a charm Isis found irresistible.
Without thinking or saying a word, she closed the distance between them and hugged him, almost bowling him over.
“Hey,” he said, holding her back to look at her. “You haven’t aged a day.”
Isis nodded to the rectangular structure a few feet away. “The stasis chambers do wonders. You’ll see.”
Lykos studied the structure skeptically. “What is it?”
“A resurrection raft. The larger vessels eject them if they’re in danger. If the crew dies, they resurrect there and can be rescued.”
Lykos shook his head. “It reminds me of the old world. Life here is a little more simple.”
Isis sensed something in his tone. Hesitation? Fear? “Are you having second thoughts about our plan?”
“No… It’s just. We’re building something good here. When we talked… back then I thought exile would be our ruin. But we’ve come together here. There’s a unity and purpose.”
“That won’t go away.”
“It’s been over twenty years for me. Tell me again.”
Isis took out a canister. “It’s a retrovirus. You simply release it anywhere. Ideally a populated area.”
He took the silver cylinder. “Sounds like something from the revolt.”
“There won’t be any terror or sickness. This virus will reunify our people, Lykos. We can live together on the same world—any of us can. One world. One people.”
“How does it work?” He raised his eyebrows. “The simple explanation.”
“My research isolated the genes that pull the levers of evolution. I call it the Atlantis Gene. It’s actually a set of genes and gene activation is a crucial part. The therapy will modify the Atlantis Gene for everyone on this world.”
“We’ll change?”
“Slowly. I’ll take periodic readings and make adjustments if anything goes wrong. The changes won’t be noticeable. It’s a slight change in brain wiring, specifically in the areas of information processing, communication, and problem solving. This therapy will expand the potential of everyone on this world. Someday this will be seen as the act that brought our people back together.” Isis waited, but Lykos said nothing. “Do you trust me?”
“Completely,” Lykos said, without hesitation.
“Then I’ll see you in a few minutes.” She smiled. “Ten thousand years, local time.”
In orbit, Isis couldn’t help but watch as Lykos journeyed back to the small village with the silver cylinder. Just before the shadow of night reached across the world, covering the rocky area that hid the resurrection raft, Lykos ventured back to it empty-handed and stepped inside.
Isis exhaled. Anticipation filled her. She opened a wormhole and returned to world 1701 and the main ship.
Janus instantly recognized her renewed energy and reflected it. “You must have had a good trip.”
“I did.”
“Me too. I loaded the D arc. You won’t believe it.” He brought up a series of images on the screen. “They’re flying reptiles with a photosynthetic dermal layer. They actually become invisible at night when they hunt.”
“Impressive.”
They talked about the exhibit on the homeworld, how the tours would have to be guarded, and how it might reignite excitement for the project, and even inspire a new group of scientists to venture out with them.
Finally, Janus said, “Ready for world 1723?”
Isis nodded, and they again entered their glass tubes, the fog floated up, and time slipped away.
CHAPTER 43
The sound of the alarm was Isis’ first indication that something was wrong. The tube opened, and the fog cleared. As usual, she was out of her tube before Janus. She hobbled across the cold metallic floor to the control panel and worked the green cloud of light that emerged, trying to determine what had gone wrong.
“Did the hyperspace tunnel collapse?” Janus asked. He rubbed his eyes and staggered out to join Isis.
“No. We’ve reached world 1723.”
A message over the speaker echoed in the small space. “This world is under a military quarantine. Evacuate immediately.”
Isis and Janus raced to the ship’s bridge. The viewscreen showed the planet below, which looked nothing like it had in the probe’s survey thousands of y
ears ago. Where a lush green, brown, and white world had been, a wasteland lay. Black craters dotted the surface. The oceans were too green, the clouds too yellow, the land only red, brown and light tan.
The ship’s voice boomed in the bridge. “Evacuation course configured. Execute?”
“Negative,” Isis said. “Sigma, silence notifications from military buoys and maintain geosynchronous orbit.”
“This is reckless,” Janus said.
“This world was attacked.”
“That’s not certain.”
“We have to investigate this.”
“It could have been a natural occurrence,” Janus said. “A series of comets or an asteroid field.”
“It wasn’t.”
“You don’t—”
“It wasn’t.” Isis zoomed the viewscreen to one of the impact craters. “A series of roads lead to each crater. There were cities there. This was an attack. Maybe they carved up an asteroid field and used the pieces for the kinetic bombardment.” The viewscreen changed again. A ruined city in a desert landscape took shape, its skyscrapers crumbling. “They let the environmental fallout take care of anyone outside the major cities. There could be answers there.” Isis’ voice was final.
Janus lowered his head. “Take the Beta Lander. It will give you better maneuverability without the arcs.”
Isis set the Beta Lander down just outside the city, reasoning that there could be leftover explosives or any number of dangers inside the ruin. If the lander were destroyed, she would have nowhere to resurrect, and her life would permanently come to an end. Setting down outside was the only safe bet.
She donned her EVA suit and exited the lander, making a direct path for the ruins of the city.
Along the way, she turned the mystery of 1723 over in her mind. The initial survey had shown two hominid subspecies, both closely related. Their evolutionary progress was in line with the other hominids within the Atlantean swath of space, and they had been deemed unremarkable.
But something had happened here. Progress, evolution had ignited. They had made a great leap forward, and an advanced civilization had risen, only to be bombarded, bombed away in an apocalypse. The thought saddened her. This world could have been what the new Atlantean homeworld had longed for: a peer world. Its discovery could re-ignite interest in space exploration. But clearly someone already knew about the world or had discovered it after the collapse: they had placed an Atlantean military beacon in orbit.
There were only two possibilities. The first was that the initial survey results had been incorrect, that the world was already destroyed when it was initially probed. The alternative was that world 1723’s civilization had risen and fallen in the interval, and some Atlantean organization had found it and opted to hide the truth.
Isis had been hiking for almost two hours when Janus’s voice came over her comm, urgent and nervous. “Incoming ship.” He paused. “It’s a sentinel sphere.”
Isis waited. She stared at the sky, as if expecting the sentinel to break the cloud cover.
“It just scanned our ship,” Janus said. “It’s moving on. Isis, I think you should get out of there.”
“Copy.” Isis started for the lander.
“The sphere is releasing something. The object is entering the atmosphere. It’s a kinetic bombardment—”
The comm signal turned to static, and then cut off. Isis saw the burning object break the clouds above her, a burning hot poker streaking through the sky. Isis began to run but stopped. It was no use. She stood there, waiting, wondering why the sentinel would fire on either this world or her.
The heat grew, and she dropped to the ground and curled into a ball. The pain beat down on her, and sweat poured out of her skin for a few seconds, and then evaporated in the baking heat of the suit. The end came quickly after that, and in the next instant, she opened her eyes, staring out of the round resurrection tube in the Beta Lander.
Kate opened her eyes. She too was in the Beta Lander, on the same world, thousands of years after the memory. She also stared out of a round glass tube, this one a vat of yellow light in the research bay.
She lay on the floor, her head in Milo’s lap. The vat where she had floated, watching, experiencing the memories of Isis lay open, a pool of blood in the floor. Her blood. Isis’ death on the world outside thousands of years ago had felt real, and it had done damage, Kate knew it instinctively. She could barely move.
Paul and Mary stood over her, and the fear on their faces confirmed her assessment.
CHAPTER 44
When Kate opened her eyes again, she was on her back on a flat metallic table. She recognized it. It was the same type of surgical table she had awoken upon in the Alpha Lander, just after the surgery there.
Paul looked down at her, worry on his face. “That was close, Kate. Beta says your life expectancy is now less than one day.”
Kate sat up. “I saw what happened here.” She realized Mary and Milo were also in the room. She spoke to the three of them, recounting what she had seen on the Atlantean homeworld, how their society had fractured.
“Why did the sentinel attack Isis on this world?” Mary asked.
“I don’t know,” Kate replied. “I think the next memory will reveal that.” She read the apprehensiveness on their faces. “I have to. We’ve been over this.” She decided to change the subject. “Any progress on the code?”
“If you want to call it that.” Paul walked to the wall panel and pulled up an image that looked like a single frame of TV static but in color. Kate was amazed at how well Paul worked the panel. She wondered how long she had been in the vat. Either way, she elevated her opinion of his intelligence.
“This image is a translation of the four base codes to CMYK. We tried RGB—red, green, blue—with a null terminator, but it was even worse. We’ve also ruled out a video and several other scenarios.”
“The running joke,” Mary said, “is that it might be like one of those pictures where you stare at it long enough and it transforms into some image.”
“But we’ve been staring at it awhile, and it hasn’t changed.” Paul said, completing her thought. “Our working theory is that it’s a genome sequence. My guess is a retrovirus.”
“I bet you’re right,” Kate said. “It could be some sort of therapy that changes brain wiring, even allows for communication over distance. Or it could work like a quantum beacon in subspace.”
“Creating a quantum entanglement,” Mary said.
“Yes,” Kate agreed. “We inject the virus, and a return signal comes in for whoever sent it.”
“Do you know what it is?” Paul asked.
“No. But…” Kate thought about the retrovirus Isis had administered to the Exiles and about the sentinels and the Serpentine war with the Atlanteans. “I think I’m close. It could be in the next memory.”
Before anyone could object, Kate ushered them out of the adaptive research lab, down the corridor and into a medical lab. She explained the genome synthesis systems and again was impressed at how quickly Paul learned.
When the sequence was loaded, Beta began counting down the construction phase. In a little less than three hours, they would have the retrovirus in the signal, and Kate hoped she would know the full truth of the Atlantis World.
She returned to the vat, donned the silver helmet, and delved back into the memories Janus had tried to erase.
The Beta Lander shook violently from the earthquakes after the impact, but to Isis’ relief, it remained intact. When the tremors subsided, the doors to the resurrection bay slid open and Janus ran in. He must have ported to the lander right after the impact, Isis thought. It wasn’t like him to take such a risk.
The tube opened, and Isis staggered out. Janus held his arms out to catch her, but she waved him away with her hand. “I’m okay.”
“We need to go.”
He led her to the portal, and they stepped out onto their main ship. Janus quickly keyed the next destination and opened a hyperspace
window before they could reach their stasis chambers.
“Why did the sentinel attack me?” Isis asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe the world was invaded by the Serpentine Army.”
“Impossible,” Isis said. “They would have had to break the sentinel line. If so, they would have reached our homeworld a long time ago. The ruins on 1723 were old.”
“We need to report this.”
“Too risky. Besides, we were told not to approach any world quarantined by a military beacon.” By Ares, Isis thought. She mulled that over for a moment.
“What if the sentinels are malfunctioning?” Janus asked.
“Unlikely. I think someone programmed the sentinels to annihilate the inhabitants of 1723.”
“That’s a big accusation.”
“It was a big civilization.”
Neither said anything after that. Isis’ thoughts drifted to the Exile world and to Lykos, lying in the stasis chamber in the resurrection raft. She decided to alter her plan, to get back there sooner than she had promised, just in case. “Let’s take some time to think about this. And let’s move on while we do. What’s our destination?”
“2319”
Isis pulled up the survey details, focusing on 2319’s location. It was too far away from the Exile world; she couldn’t reach it in the Delta Lander. She searched the database of planets that would work.
“What about 1918? It had three hominid species during the initial survey. It could be interesting to do a comparative evolutionary study.”
Janus thought for a moment. “Yes. I agree.”
When 1918 came into view, Isis knew she had made a good choice. The world was the third planet in its solar system, had a single, uninhabited, rocky moon, and had recently undergone a significant global climate change. A small isthmus had risen between two of the minor continents in the northern and southern hemisphere, dividing the planet’s massive ocean into two smaller bodies of water, altering sea currents and the habitats of several species of primates on the central continent. Several hominids were venturing out of their ancestral jungle habitats onto the plains. The environmental and dietary changes were causing permanent changes to their genomes.